


somewhere, a man is sitting

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Acting, Angst, Emotionally Repressed, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension, malcolm you useless man help him, slight vent? possibly idk, tfw u physically cant open up abt ur feelings so u just act out a whole ass theatre piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21532612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Dark.Light.Somewhere, a man is sitting.If you look into his distant eyes you can see something like a flame, a fury, some sort of willpower.
Relationships: Joey Drew/Malcolm McNamara
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	somewhere, a man is sitting

Joey gave him a weary, lopsided smile: “Hello.” he breathed.

“Hello.” Malcolm smiled.

They stood in front of one another for a while.

“Are you going to let me in?”

“Yes. Yes, sure, of, of course, come in. Sit, sit down.”

The house was unusually quiet, the lawyer noted.

“Is Charlie asleep already?”

“No. No, he’s at a friend’s house.” Joey was nervous, jittery. He leaned heavily on his prothesis and crutch. “Having a pijama party. Slumber party? One of those. You know those, right? One of those.”

He sat across from his brother-in-law. His hands fidgeted on the armchairs, moving the fingers as if to test them out for the very first time; making grabbing motions, raising and lowering them one after the other, scratching fabric, tensing for a couple seconds. He breathed in quickly, held his breath, exhaled rapidly.

He slammed his head in his hands and gave a wavering breath.

“God, what the fuck am I doing.”

“Joey?”

“I can’t.” he shook his head, sobs breaking his voice, “I can’t.”

Malcolm tried to stand up, but he cried out: “Sit down! Sit down.”

“Joey-”

“God. God, no, no, I can’t.”

“Joey, you can talk to me.”

“No, no-”

“That’s why you called me.”

“I know, but I- I can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry, I, I can’t. I can’t talk to you, I, I can’t talk to anybody, I can’t-”

“Try to breathe.”

“No, I-”

Joey threw himself on the chair’s backrest. He sniffed, taking hasty breaths through the mouth, eyes closed.

“Dark.” he forced to come out of his throat.

He opened his eyes again: “Light.”

His stare was glassy, blind. He sounded as if he was narrating.

“Somewhere, a man is sitting.

If you look into his distant eyes you can see something like a flame, a fury, some sort of willpower.

The man doesn’t move an inch. He’s still. Terribly still.

What’s wrong, what happened?, you ask. The man doesn’t look at you. He looks far away, to the back of the theater, past the seats, to the exit door. Something happened, he says, finally.

It’s normal, you say, things happen to everybody.

No, the man says. Not to me.

Things happen to others. Things happen to you, to your parents, but not to me. Things can’t happen to me.

He stands up.”

And Joey stood up, unsteadily.

“His eyes still look to the exit door. Still look far away.

He turns his head slowly.”

And Joey turned his head to the side, his irises completely empty.

“Tremendously slowly.

And he starts walking in circles.”

And Joey made a step, and another, and another. He struggled with his prothesis as he turned.

“He’s limping.

And as he walks, the man speaks.

Everything ends, doesn’t it. It’s only natural for things to end. It’s only natural for things to happen, if you’re not careful, if you act like a stupid, spoiled child, if you ignore the signals and take on the behaviour of a disgusting whining sludge, it’s only natural for things to happen, and fail, and end. It’s only natural. It’s how it is.

But not for me. Not for the things I did. For the things I made.

My things don’t end. They can’t end. They’re eternal, endless, immortal. They can’t end. I can’t allow them to end. I worked too hard for them to end.

I gave too much for them to end.”

Joey leaned on the armchair, gritting his teeth in a pained hiss.

His hand wandered almost aimlessly around it, looking for his crutch. His fingers were shaking as he closed his grip on it.

“He starts walking again. It’s short steps, quick steps.

Would be quicker if it didn’t hurt.

And he keeps speaking.

You don’t get it. You don’t get how big it was for me. How big it is for me. What I made. It is everything. Everything. My whole life, my whole dream and purpose and family. That’s what it is. Everything. I made it on my own, out of youth and improvisation, out of a wish to be known and to make people feel - and there’s still those who say I didn’t. Those who say I lived like a leech, a disgusting parasite carried around by a poor creature - ah! They don’t know a thing. A thing, I say. They speak of something they don’t have the barest understanding of. If they knew. If they knew how much I loved. How much I gave. How much I did. How much I worked. And the pain.

God, the pain.”

He stopped in his tracks, eyes closed. His face grimaced, and suddenly his prothesis was flying through the room, hitting the wall with the sturdy sound of wood against wood.

He stumbled forward, his balance lost; he gripped his crutch with both hands as if his life depended on it.

He sucked in a breath.

“It’s unfair.

It’s just so unfair.

Why did it have to be me.

Why did I have to get the idea, get on top of it all, make decisions.

Why was I the one who ended up throwing my own everything in the garbage.

I was supposed to be better.

Better than all the other ones, better than myself.

Why couldn’t I be that?

Somebody else.

Somebody who wasn’t childish or angry or in the clouds or hiding in his stupid office or behind his stupid fake feelings, or just… Just not me.

Anybody would have been fine. Anybody else would have been perfect.

Why did I have to be me?”

Malcolm watched him slowly, slowly breathe in three times.

He watched him swallow air, his Adam’s apple bobbing ever so slightly, as one of his arms moved slowly to reach his only leg, fingers ghosting above it and barely grazing the fabric of his pants.

“A devil crawls up the man’s knee. It crawls up over to his ears and whispers terrible, horrible things. Its words are muffled, soft and fast, but you can imagine what the devil is saying. You can try to.

The man doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even open his eyes.

Just takes a better seat - and stays.

Still as a rock.

The devil shakes him. Its whispers become screams in gibberish, its claws tear at the man’s clothes. The man opens his eyes, but not for the devil. His stare goes far away, alien to what is happening to his own body.

The devil loses its patience. It spits on the ground, enraged and insulted, and it climbs down the man. It speaks clearly.

We’ll just get you ourselves, you can hear it say as it goes away. Like you won’t end up with us. Oh, you will, trust me. If you don’t wanna make yourself go, we’ll just get you ourselves. You’re one of ours. You belong to us, we’ll just get you ourselves. Just you wait and see. We’ll just get you ourselves.

The man pays it no mind.

He stares far away, past you, past the seats, to the theater exit door.”

Joey didn’t see a thing.

He was in his apartment; at least, that was the last place he was sure he’d been inside of. It felt like a stage, with a single too bright projector pointed on him and nobody in the seats in front of him.

Everything felt outside of him in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Like this was not real.

Like he was not real.

“Somewhere, a man is sitting.” he breathed, lips brushing against one another.

“If you look into his distant eyes, you can see a spark, the lone, feeble reminder of a will in the dark centre of his pupil.

A snuffer falls upon it, choking it.

Dark.”

No applause.

There was no audience, after all.

He remained still, looking to the theater exit door without finding the strength to move an inch. He should have at least exited the scene. Asked for a curtain call.

His leg hurt terribly.

Siamese green eyes stared into his soul.

Oh.

Right.

He was not on stage.

“Could you come help me breathe, please?” he murmured with a quiet voice. “I don’t think I can on my own.”

Malcolm stood up without a single sound; the floor didn’t creak under his feet, as if he was hovering above it. His hands pressed against Joey’s chest, softly, compressing his lungs ever so slightly. Joey exhaled slowly. He inhaled as the pressure lessened, almost desperate for contact.

They repeated the process several times in perfect silence, never daring to look at one another once.

Exhale, inhale. A second of apnea. Exhale, inhale. A second of apnea.

In his peripheral vision, he could notice thin lips (around the height of his neck) moving slowly, without sound. The words reached him later.

“You are very good at playwriting. You should consider that.”

Exhale, inhale. A second of apnea.

Joey curled an arm around Malcolm’s neck, leaned into a brief kiss, slid off of him and allowed his body to go limp against the chair.

Exhale.

He shut his eyes tight.

His lip was bleeding.

Of course it was bleeding. He was biting into it.

He began sobbing, and his chest rose in hiccups against a hand that was too stunned to move.

“Please don’t leave me…” he whispered between tears to someone who couldn’t hear him, “Please, don’t… Don’t go… You and Charlie are all I have left. Please… I’m begging you, just… Just forget everything… But don’t leave…”

Don’t leave.

He just wanted him not to leave.

He opened his eyes the morning after with great difficulty, as if the salt in his tears had stuck his eyelids to them. His back creaked after being forced to spend hours clasped in a chair.

The apartment was quiet.

The kind of quiet one finds in a empty house.

Or an abandoned theater.


End file.
